> A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous."
> To put it bluntly, it is necessary to create terror for a while in every rural area."
Let's not glamourize the Mao's land reforms. It required the killing of 1-2 million people. Even then, the collectivization was a massive failure - not only did the peasantry not get to enjoy the benefits of land reform, a further 15 million people would die from the resulting famine.
The deep irony is that Taiwan was actually able to do the same reform but with much better outcomes, with much less loss of life or political violence.